Good Morning!

Gerard K. Cohen

Lead Accessibility Strategist, Wells Fargo Digital Solutions for Business (DS4B)

Accessibility: Past, Present, Future

Image description: Movie poster from Back to the Future.

Flux Capacitor

Image description: Flux capacitor set to january 4, 1809.

Louis Braille

Image description: Paining of Louis Braille as an adult.

Louis Braille born premature - January 4, 1809

Image description: Parents huddled over little Louis' crib.

Working on leather

Image description: Louis' dad working on leather.

Louis imitates father

Image description: Louis accidentally stabs himself in eye while imitating his father.

Image description: Louis' father working on some leather.

Infections grows

Image description: Little Louis looking out a window.

Darkness

Image description: Louis experiencing the dark.

Learning to live

Image description: Little Louis walking with a cane.

"My hard bed was in a damp, crowded room. My uniform itched. My meals were small and cold. The teachers were strict. The older boys teased and stole.

"because somewhere in this old, moldy building, there were books for the blind. "

I sighed. Even if I read a hundred books like this, how much could I learn?

Americans with Disabilities Act July 26, 1990

Together, we must remove the physical barriers we have created and the social barriers that we have accepted. For ours will never be a truly prosperous nation until all within it prosper.

Capital Crawl March 12, 1990

Jennifer Keelan

Internet

Al Gore

Vint Cerf Father of the Internet

  • 1979 - Invented the TCP/IP, the backbone of internet communication.
  • 1982 - Invented first commercial email
  • 1997 - U.S. National Medal of Technology
  • 2004 - Alan M. Turing award aka “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”
  • 2005 - Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • 2012 - Internet Hall of Fame Inductee
  • Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google

"It's almost criminal that programmers have not had their feet held to the fire to build interfaces that are accommodating for people with vision problems or hearing problems or motor problems."

Tim Berners-Lee Father of the World Wide Web

  • 1989 - Invented the World Wide Web
  • 1990 - Invented the first browser and web server
  • 1994 - Founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
  • 1997 - Launches the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
  • 1999 - Named one of 100 Most Important People of the 20th century by Time Magazine

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

Richard Schwerdtfeger Inventor of ARIA

  • 1990 - First screen reader for GUI
  • First Voice Recognition navigation and dictation tool for the mobility impaired
  • First talking browser, Home Page Reader, for blind and low vision users
  • First cross-platform screen reader

Section 508 Refresh January 9, 2017

WCAG 2.1 June 5, 2018 (Recommendation)

17 new guidelines

  • Low Vision
  • Cognitive
  • Mobile

ARIA 1.1 December 14, 2017 (Recommendation)

HTML 5.2December 14, 2017 (Recommendation)

  • Dialog
  • Headings as fieldset legends.
  • Better parity with ARIA
  • 5.3 Working Draft, October 18 2018

Trump?

HR 620 ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017

Stats

CDC Stats

  • 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability
  • 26 percent (one in 4) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Graphic of the United States.
  • The percentage of people living with disabilities is highest in the South.

Percentage of adults with functional disability types

  • 13.7 percent of people with a disability have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
  • 10.8 percent of people with a disability have a cognition disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions.
  • 6.8 percent of people with a disability have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
  • 5.9 percent of people with a disability are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing
  • 4.6 percent of people with a disability have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
  • 3.6 percent of people with a disability have a self-care disability with difficulty dressing or bathing.

Disability and communities.

Disability is especially common in these groups, older adults, women and minorites.

  • 2 in 5 adults age 65 years and older have a disability
  • 1 in 4 women have a disability.
  • 2 in 5 non-Hispanic American Indians/ Alaska Natives have a disability.

42%popular federal gov't websites fail accessibility tests

  • International Trade Administration (trade.gov)
  • Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)

March 8, 2017 - Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)

60%increase in accessibility errors over the last 5 years for Alexa Top 100 sites

  • 70 sites failed color contrast

March 1, 2017 - WebAIM

60%increase in accessibility errors over the last 5 years for Alexa Top 100 sites

  • 70 sites failed color contrast

March 1, 2017 - WebAIM

The Future

Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft

"As we talk about technology, one of the things we need in particular as technologists and decision-makers is to keep in mind the timeless values that drive what we do. How are we going to use technology to empower people? We definitely want more productivity and efficiency, but we do not want to degrade humanity."

Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft

"We must make Microsoft products accessible to the more than 1 billion people globally of all abilities. This is a shared goal. Universal design is central to how we realize our mission and will make all our products better. Along with our Senior Leadership Team, I will continue to devote my time and passion to this priority""

Tim Cook CEO, Apple

"For us, we believe very deeply that accessibility is a human right, and we try very hard to make all of our products accessible for everyone because of that. It's a basic value."

eSight

DOT

Bradley

enchroma

Conclusion

Evaluation

Please fill out the evaluation for this session at https://accessinghigherground.org/evaluation

Thank you!